delenir Wrote:(and am working on trying not to browse any English site, period

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476

intermu Wrote:

KREVA Wrote:Well, I'd say that most of my improvement has just been through constant exposure over time. When I first started out learning Japanese, listening was so hard because I would focus so hard on what was being said just to have nearly 99% of it go right over my head. It was so frustrating, yet I persisted with the train of thought that the more I listened to it, the more I would start to understand. As time went on, listening got easier, and I didn't do much for this to happen besides having audio playing in my environment close to all my waking hours.

I'm wondering whether you actually focus on understanding what's being said the whole time. I mean if you're multitasking, for example: doing homework while listening to TV, do you let the TV on without focusing on the words, or do you still focus on it?

Also, how long does it take for you to start being comfortable with listening?

Well, I would say that most of the time I actively listen to it unless interrupted. Even if I passively listen, I make sure the volume is up enough for me to hear it as I focus on other things (multitasking as you said). If I was doing homework while having Japanese playing on the TV, I would do this: turn the TV up louder than usual so that I have more chances of being distracted by the audio and vaguely following along. I decided to do this because sometimes when the audio isn't up enough to be confortably audible, you can get too immersed in your work and then realize that you didn't pick anything up from the audio while you were focusing on your homework.

Being comfortable is so slow a process that I cannot give you an exact duration. It only took a few months to eliminate what sounds like "gibberish" though. After those 3 months, I was used to hearing Japanese, but still hadn't heard enough sounds or knew hardly enough words to understand what was being expressed. That was the boat I was in for the longest: being able to hear Japanese, but not being able to comprehend because I didn't know the meanings of the words I could hear. Also, I want to say that I truly believe that listening to Japanese Hip-Hop has probably helped me the most when getting familiar with the Japanese language as far as listening goes. I've been listening to tons of fast pace music for so long in my studies, and comprehension is getting pretty clear. I can remember times when I would listen to the fast paced rap songs for weeks on end, and then suddenly pop in a movie or video and think how slow the people were talking compared to the raps in the music. I think it's great conditioning if that's your thing.

immersion environment can be linked at what stage of learning. Whether it be beginner,intermediate, advanced. In the beginner stages, it can be mainly used for just getting accustomed to the sounds of Japanese. Intermediate to make the connections in Japanese. And advanced for making full comprehension+connections of internal monologue+thinking in Japanese. It all varies with level at times, but there's nothing wrong with having it on all the time,everywhere if possible. Anyhow has anyone hear dreamed in japanese before? Like full-blown japanese or even a little japanese? I'm wondering b/c it seems everytime i listen to so much japanese+do in one day. I end up having dreams in full Japanese. Speech-wise though.

Immersion if key for this+making the internal connections of the japanese language in you're head. Like for example, when i'm doing SRS sentences from my anki deck. I usual write it in full, read it, try to understand it and listen to japanese all while doing this. I know some ppl may think that isn't effective, could be more troublesome then effective, but there's nothing wrong with listening to it. All i'm saying is that it makes connections of what's being heard(i.e. sounds of japanese) to what's being learned for the language. I must say in the past 4.5 months of doing immersion, my understanding of japanese has boosted a lot both understanding via sound+written japanese. This is due to heavy immersion i do.Well i try to do 70% daily if possible. One time i did like 90%, and my head was going crazy with japanese(i don't recommend that to anyone lol, too much japanese can be frustrating for the mind, but all at the same time if used effectively it can be used well). Sorry for my grammer, for some reason it's been getting worse every since i've been advancing in Japanese.

ta12121, glad you are noticing some improvements from your heavy immersion that you do.

As for you question about if I dream in Japanese, I must say that I have many times though not lately. Lately I have been staying up very late due to school being out for the moment, so by the time I go to bed, I fall deep asleep to wake up not remembering much dreaming at all. However, I used to dream in Japanese all the time when I used to use headphones instead of speakers at night for my method of audio input during sleeping hours. There is just something about having audio tightly snugged into the ear canals; seems as though you pick up a lot more during the sleeping stage as opposed to speaker audio which gets distorted because of both distance and state of sleep. I have even had weird scenarios where my ears would clearly follow the dialogue while my brain made up images to go along with the dialogue even if it did not make sense. The weird thing is that most of the time it did make some sort of sense.

That's interesting to hear, i don't really try to listen to japanese while sleeping, it bugs me alot. So i';d rather just sleep well and then wake up and listen to japanese if possible. It's weird when dreaming in japanese, b/c majority of the dreams i had were random. But in the dream i understand everything that was being said.

ta12121 Wrote:i don't really try to listen to japanese while sleeping, it bugs me alot. So i';d rather just sleep well and then wake up and listen to japanese if possible.

That's precisely why I decided to stop using head/earphones and began using speakers instead. I did lots of experimenting with sleeping and audio early on and found that with the headphones I wasn't getting enough sleep for the classes I had to take daily. With the speakers, I noticed much better sleep (close to not sleeping with anything at all on) and it allowed me not only better sleep, but also to be able to keep my immersion environment (win-win situation in my case). Also, the most valuable time, I think, for headphones/speakers or audio in general being on at night is for the half-wake/ half-sleep states. I think those times, alone, make it worth keeping the Japanese on during the night (even with a medium-low volume setting, which is what I tend use). Similar to having audio on during the 10-15 minutes of a bath/shower; it all adds up over time if you're consistent with it.

I think that during the first college year, and speacilly during the summer vacations I grew a lot, mentally, is what responsability is concerned.

I'm now living alone (ok, with my cat) during the week, and while I'm home (until I go to sleep) there's always something japanese playing. During the past 2 weeks, japanese drama "Mother" has been my choice. I've watched it many times and ontinue to watch it, as it is quite easy to understand and the main characters are almost all women, so it's useful to catch the way they speak.

Other than that, if I have no other stuff to study I just study japanese. I think that this year my japanese knowlegde will increase quite a bit. I inted on finishing AAIJ until christmas, I doubt I can do it, but I'll try. From now on I'll spend more time studying lessons on textbooks because I want to get used to the dialogs and expressions.

My MP3 player has japanese music/podcasts/dorama only.

My android smartphone (which is now damaged, hopefully when it arrives from repair it will be good) will have anki with, japanese songs/podcasts/dramas, japanese dictionaries and whatever.

I'm going to download more dramas (japanese subs only) soon. I think dramas are great to learn. I've learned several new words and expressions from "mother", and I'm still learning.

My focus until december 2011 will be the JLPT2 (I'm now starting level 3 studies). After graduation I intend on taking a masters degree in japanese language in japan (already mining applications/admission tests vocabulary), if that happens not to be possible I'll just go there to improve my japanese skills (with a schollarship from a foundation here in my country) and then will try again to apply for a masters.

I'm learning 15 new anki cards a day and in this past month I think my vocabulary has increased greatly from this. I remember trying to make previous jlpt tests (3kyuu) more than one month ago and it had some vocabulary I didn't know, know there are rare exceptions.

I'm going to buy a radio to put some pop music and podcasts there so that I fall asleep listening to japanese and japanese becomes the first thing I hear in the morning.


EDIT:
I forgot to talk about anki.

I learn 15 new cards a day. And the number of reviews as been increasing, I have about 150 per day. I spend about one hour a day in anki. Now I have 2 decks, a genreral one, for vocabulary, grammar and a 警護 one, which has less than 40 cards, I think, even though I have I have to review the keigo I learned again, with genki.

I'm going to add another that, the one for AAIJ.

Once, when my japanese was much worse than now I had a dream that I had a female japanese friend. I was so happy about that.

Sounds like my dream predicted something...
Now I have many different japanese friends as if it were normal .

I started doing immersion about a year ago and I feel it has helped me tremendously in my ability to comprehend spoken Japanese. I don't necessarily understand the words that are being spoken, but i can hear the way things are being conjugated, make out double consonant sounds (i.e. かっこく, しっている, etc) without much trouble, and in general if i listen to a japanese song a few times i will start to be able to sing along with the song without actually understanding the words that i'm saying.

For a while i was frustrated that i was only understanding the words that i studied, but then i started to realize something... when i would learn a new word, and i had heard it dozens of times prior to that through my immersion, the next time i heard it my brain immediately clicked and made the connection. I feel like the immersion lays a nice bed for your studies to come along afterwards to add actual meaning to the sounds.

My immersion goes pretty much the same as everyone else that has described it: music with either japanese lyrics or no lyrics all day every day (http://www.lastfm.jp/user/hotsw4p if you are interested). My study materials open and sitting out on my desk so that i can just glance at them when i have time. As many programs as possible on my computer set to use Japanese as their interface language. My google feed reader contains a bunch of blogs in japanese... i especially appreciate the ones that are generally shorter and less frequently posted so that i don't get too overloaded... IOW, i don't tend to read my Google.jp feed because they post walls of text every time and it is too much for me.

Regarding my studies, I generally just study when I feel up to it. I try not to stress out on adding X amount of cards per week, because it starts to feel like a job and it stresses me out. I generally just try to keep my reviews from piling up, and add cards when I feel in the mood to do it. I'm slowly tredging through RTK because I think it's boring as hell, but I get in the mood to do it when I remember how much good it has done me thus far. I try to hit my smart.fm lists when I think about it, and I physically write out each sentence from those lists by hand so that I get practice writing full sentences. When i'm talking to my japanese language exchange partner, I try to take notes of the things she says or writes that I don't quite understand, or take notes of the useful phrases she may say that I could repeat to her another day.

Immersion is DEFINITELY where it's at though. I think if anything, it CONSTANTLY reminds me of my goals and CONSTANTLY keeps Japanese on my mind. Without my immersion, pretty much no other aspect of my life is Japanese, so I rely on it heavily to keep me motivated and keep it on the tip of my mind. I feel like immersion is probably the primary reason that I reach for my study materials on a regular basis... I either hear something I don't know and get frustrated (which makes me want to study more), I hear a string of songs in a row that I really enjoy and I want to learn the lyrics to, or I am watching a movie/anime/tv show and I am able to understand a big string of dialogue. All of these are largely motivating factors for me to keep studying so I cherish my immersion greatly and would never attempt to study a language without it.

edit: i should also mention that I don't have cable television, never go to the movies, never watch english-speaking movies or tv shows, don't read english books, etc. pretty much anything i do that involves media i try to keep it in japanese. UNLESS i'm out with friends... at which point i just let the japanese stuff completely slide and do whatever it is we are doing.